There's a flip side to this. Academia's hiring practices inherently prevent talented people from returning to academia. Hiring is slow (it takes at least six months), and it is absolutely contingent upon the candidate having a great publication record.
When you leave for more than a year or so, it's a one-way ticket out. As an academic, I would love to have greater liquidity in the industry/academia job market.
In the UK certain academic disciplines have a long record of post docs disappearing off for a few years and then coming back, often driving a nicer car. Being publicly funded universities probably helps, but all it takes is establishing a relationship with the university in question. There's enough DOD grant money out there that if they wanted to they could probably change academic hiring practices to support that process. So could private industries for that matter.
I have occasionally applied for (non-academia) software development jobs at universities, usually in relation to the health care sector.
It takes all of them at least a month to even set up an initial phone screen, and some can't even manage that. Also, they tend to pay way below market wages.
It's not just the hiring practices for researchers and professors. That idiocy likely extends all the way down to the part-time gardeners. You can't afford to endure the process unless you already have a job.
The only reason universities can get away with this is because they are largely protected from competition, and are usually the largest single employer in whatever city they may be in.
I work at a university as a software dev. I got offered the job, interviewed, and started working in a couple weeks. It was actually a very seamless process.
The pay for my area is comparable to private jobs, but I don't get all the startups benefits like pingpong and snacks. It's just a basic office job. The good part though is that there is no bureaucracy and I have free roam to develop in any environment I want.
I'm not an academic but I work for one. If that makes sense.
This is a non-trivial point. Those black holes on your records DO influence hiring managers. Say you worked for #ThreeLetterAgency for 10 years in a very secretive manner. Depending on state laws, you may not even be able to say which languages, o-scopes, or databases that you are proficient in. That leaves an employer with pretty much nothing to go on to evaluate your skills. Guess what will happen then?
Yes, this gets into the brokenness of hiring and interviewing, a problem a lot of start-ups are tackling, but the problem is there today. Many people in #ThreeLetterAgency know this and may feel trapped in the job, and rightfully so.
So, have some compassion for your fellow humans in these #ThreeLetterAgencys. They have families and kids just as we do, and a different set of courages and viewpoints than what we see and feel.
Given the scale of the operation that the NSA appear to be running, I would imagine that it would be in the organisation's own interest to provide 'outward trajectories' for those employees who were developing doubts about the work they did. Better that (from the NSA's point of view) than a few dozen Snowdens.
I'd imagine a transfer from highly classified work to less highly classified work, followed over time with the opportunity to work with external contractors and then perhaps move into the commercial sector.
People quit bad jobs and even switch industries all the time. I think you're overestimating how many of us are going to be shedding tears for those poor hardworking folks, chained to their data collection with golden handcuffs.
Shedding tears is overestimating it by a lot. Just remember that these are people too, with hopes and dreams like the rest of us. They have weaknesses and holes too, possibly ones that keep them in their jobs. They do have unique and restricted viewpoints, but they should be viewed just as we view all others. That said, it is a shame that these people cannot help guide policy and democracy with such more informed views that they are allowed to see.
And realise that you can't publish most of the things you've been working on for years because it's classified.